
A LITTLE COLLECTION 


OF 



BY 






























































UneleWalt’s 

Philosophy 






































f 

I 

I 

I 

I 



I 





UneleWalt’s 

Philosophy 

A little collection 
of Prose Poems 

by 

Walt Mason 



r» o 


WAWilde Company 

Boston Chicago 


| 

I 

I 

1 

1 
I 



i 

























i — 

. A^z3 LI c* 
< 2 , 


Library of Congress 



2009 525065 


Copyright 19:12 
by ' 

George Matthew Adams 

















NERO’S 

FIDDLE 


E have often roasted 
Nero that he played 
the violin, while his 
native Rome was 
burning and the fire¬ 
men raised a din; 
there he sat and 
played “Bedelia,” heedless of the 
fiery storm, while the fire chief 
pranced and sweated in his neat red 
uniform. And I often think that 
Nero had a pretty level head; would 
the fire have been extinguished had 
he fussed around instead? Would 
the fire insurance folks have 
loosened up a shekel more, had old 
Nero squirted water on some gro¬ 
cer’s cellar door? When there comes 
a big disaster, people straightway 
lose their wits; they go round with 
hands a-wringing, sweating blood 
and throwing fits; but the wise man 
sits and fiddles, plays a tune from 
end to end, for it never pays to 
worry over things you cannot mend. 
It is good to offer battle when catas- 
trophies advance, it is well to keep 
on scrapping while a fellow has a 
chance; but when failure is as certain 
as the coming of the dusk, then it’s 
wise to take your fiddle and fall back 
on “Money Musk/ 




E 



























t== iiiaop.^/^1 * 







POLITENESS 

N my youth I knew an 
aleck who was most 
exceeding smart, and 
his flippant way of 
talking often broke 
the hearer’s heart. He 
was working for a 
grocer in a little cor¬ 
ner store, taking down the wooden 
shutters, sweeping up the greasy floor, 
and he always answered pertly, and he 
had a sassy eye, and the people often 
asked him if he wouldn’t kindly die. 
Oh, the festive years skedaddled, and 
the children of that day, now are bent 
beneath life’s burdens, and their hair is 
turning gray; and the flippant one is 
toiling in the same old corner store, 
taking down the ancient shutters, 
sweeping up the greasy floor. In the 
same old sleepy village lived a springald 
so polite that to hear him answer ques¬ 
tions was a genuine delight; he was 
working in a foundry where they dealt 
in eggs and cheese, and the work was 
hard and tiresome, but he always tried 
to please. And today he’s boss of thou¬ 
sands, and his salary’s sky high—and 
his manner’s just as pleasant as it was 
in days gone by. It’s an idle, trifling 
story, and you doubtless think it flat, 
but its moral might be pasted with 
some profit in your hat. 
































KNOWLEDGE 

NE day a farmer 
found a bone; he 
thought at first it 
was a stone, and 
threw it at a passing 
snake ere he dis¬ 
covered his mis¬ 
take. But when he knew it was a 
bone, and not a diamond or a stone, 
he took it to an ancient sage, who 
said: “In prehistoric age, this was the 
shin-bone of a Thor-dineriomegan- 
tosaur-megopium-permastodon-leth- 
eriumsohelpmejohn.” The farmer 
cried: “Dad bing my eyes! Was ever 
man so wondrous wise? He gazes 
on a piece of bone, that I supposed 
to be a stone, and, with a confidence 
sublime, he looks across the void of 
time, and gives this fossil bone a 
name, the fragment of some crea¬ 
ture's frame! To have such know¬ 
ledge, sir, as thine, I’d give those 
fertile farms of mine.” “Don’t envy 
me,” the sage replied, and shook his 
weary head, and sighed, “Your life 
to me seems full and sweet—you 
always have enough to eat!” 







































T’S waking and 
sleeping, and heav- 
ing a sigh, and 
watching and weep- 
ing, and saying 
goodby. It’s long 
hours of labor and 
short hours of rest, it’s helping our 
neighbor, and doing our best; it’s 
fasting and dining, and striving in vain, 
and joy and repining, and sunshine 
and rain. It’s laughing and crying, 
it's darkness and light, and wishing 
the dying a loving good night. It's 
dancing and wailing, and battling 
with men, succeeding and failing, and 
trying again. It’s wooing and ma¬ 
ting, it’s foolish and wise, it’s loving 
and hating and dealing in lies. Man 
says it is dreary, as graveward he 
goes; he says he is weary and longs 
for repose; he says it is hollow, de¬ 
luding and vain, and others who fol¬ 
low repeat the refrain. But I shall not 
hurry this old world to leave; what 
though it may worry and gall us and 
grieve? It gives us good measure 
of joy as we go; there’s always a 
pleasure to pay for a woe. I’m 
fond of the mixture of laughter and 
tears; I’d fain be a fixture for ten 
thousand years. 



































IN THE 
MORNING 




HEN you leave your 
downy couch with 
a big three-cornered 
grouch, and begin 
your morning’s 
labors with the man¬ 
ners of a bear, then 
your friends will wish you’d slide to 
the forest wild and wide, and, like 
any other bruin, do your growling 
in your lair. I have figured it this 
way: If I want to spoil my day, if I 
want to fuss and clamor till my jaws 
are flecked with foam, I should seek 
a place remote, there to shed my 
shoes and coat, and kick up a holy 
rumpus till the cows are coming 
home. For I haven’t got the right 
to go snapping, day and night, mak¬ 
ing life a weary burden to the people 
that I meet; and although my nature’s 
dour, and my temper hard and sour, 
I have made some folks imagine that 
it’s reasonably sweet \ Life is more 
or less a bluff, and pretension is the 
stuff; just pretend that you are gentle, 
though you’re savage as a bear; just 
pretend that you are kind, and the 
people are so blind that they’ll say 
you are a daisy, and they'll praise 
you everywhere! 





































































PRETTY 
GOOD SCHEMES 

T’S a pretty good 
scheme to be 
cheery, and sing as 
you follow the 
road, for a good 
many pilgrims are 
weary, and hope¬ 
lessly carry the load; their hearts 
from the journey are breaking, and 
a rod seems to them like a mile; and 
it may be the noise you are making 
will hearten them up for a while. 
Its a pretty good scheme in your 
joking, to cut out the jest that’s un¬ 
kind, for the barbed kind of fun you 
are poking, some fellow may carry 
in mind; and a good many hearts 
have been broken, a good many 
hearts fond and true, by words that 
were carelessly spoken by alecky 
fellows like you. It's a pretty good 
scheme to be doing some choring 
around while you can; for the gods 
with their gifts are pursuing the earn¬ 
est industrious man; and those gods, 
in their own El Dorado, are laying 
up wrath for the one who loafs all the 
day in the shadow, while others toil, 
out in the sun. 












































COURAGE 

HEN luck is dead 
against you and 
everything looks 
black, it does no 
good to falter or 
turn upon your 
track; it does no 
good bewailing the errors you have 
made, or counting all the byways in 
which your feet have strayed; it does 
no good insisting that others were 
at fault, for he who blames his com¬ 
rades is hardly worth his salt; and 
weeping never helps you, or makes 
the way less rough, for tears are 
only water, and water's washy stuff. 
Brace up, O weary pilgrim, brace up 
and be a man! Though fortune sore¬ 
ly swats you, do still the best you 
can! Dame Fortune often tests us, 
to see how high we stack, and if she 
sees us weeping, or turning on the 
track, she sadly says: “These pil¬ 
grims are bargain counter goods; it's 
not worth while to show them the 
pathway from the woods!" But if 
we meet affliction with courage bold 
and high, she guides us to the val¬ 
leys where her possessions lie. So 
do not weep or languish when life 
seems void of hope, for tears are 
only water, and water's flimsy dope. 































USELESS 

GRIEFS 


HUNDRED years 
ago and more, men 
wrung their hands, 
and walked the 
floor, and worried 
over this or that, 
and thought their 
cares would squash them flat. 
Where are those worriedbeings now? 
The bearded goat and festive cow 
eat grass above their mouldered 
bones, and jay birds call, in strident 
tones. And where the ills they 
worried o'er? Forgotten all, for ever 
more. Gone all the sorrow and the 
woe, that lived a hundred years ago! 
The grief that makes you scream to¬ 
day, like other griefs, will pass away; 
and when you've cashed your little 
string, and jay birds o'er your bosom 
sing, the stranger pausing there to 
view the marble works that cover 
you, will think upon the uselessness 
of human worry and distress. So let 
the worry business slide; live while 
you live, and when you've died, the 
folks will say, around your bier: “He 
made a hit while he was here!" 

































THE KIND 
WORD 

HE kindly word's as 
cheap as dirt, so 
give a kindly word 
today, and it may 
heal some grievous 
hurt, and cheer 
some pilgrim on his 
way. There is no profit in a frown; 
it never eased a load of care; its 
memory may travel down some 
other's heart and anchor there. The 
kindly word you pass along, the 
pleasant smile that you bestow, may 
fill some darkened life with song, 
aud make some weary bosom glow. 
You may forget that word and smile, 
but some one treasures them, be sure; 
you’ll hear about them in a while, 
for through the ages they’ll endure. 
It may be in a million years when 
you, from whom the kind words 
flow, are roaming o'er the shining 
spheres, and sowing stardust as you 
go; some other Shape will hail you 
there, and cry, across the fleecy floor: 
“You saved me from the Black Des¬ 
pair, when we were on that lower 
shore! Your kindness brought me 
to these heights, where I have sought 
you far and wide; through all my 
days, and all my nights, I prayed for 
you until I died!” 































1 


I 




HE world rolls on, 
from day to day, 
and idle men are in 
the way; the loaf¬ 
ing graft will never 
pay; get busy, then, 
get busy! The man 
who loiters in the shade to watch 
the busy men’s parade will find his 
hopes of fortune fade; get busy, 
then, get busy! If you in feeble 
style depend upon assistance from 
a friend, you’re sure to fail before 
the end; get busy, then, get busy! 
Make up up your mind that you 
will pack your burden on your own 
broad back, and, brave and buoy¬ 
ant, hit the track; get busy, then, 
get busy! Just feel that you're of 
equal worth with any doggone 
man on earth, regardless of his age 
or birth; get busy, then, get busy! 
And, having made your mind up 
quite, show by your acts that you 
are right! Cut grass, cut grass, by 
day and night! Get busy, O get 
busy! 
































IS days were joyous 
and serene, his life 
was pure, his record 
clean; folks named 
their children after 
him, and he was in 
the social swim; am¬ 
bitious lads would 
say: “I plan to be just such a worthy 
man!” But in the fullness of his years, 
the tempter whispered in his ears, and 
begged that he would make the race 
for county judge, or some such place. 
And so he yielded to his fate, and came 
forth as a candidate. The night before 
election day they found him lying, cold 
and gray, the deadest man in all the 
land, this message in his icy hand: “The 
papers that opposed my race have 
brought me into deep disgrace; I find 
that I’m a fiend unloosed; I robbed a 
widows chicken roost, and stole an 
orphans Easter egg, and swiped a sol¬ 
dier's wooden leg. I bilked a heathen 
of his joss, and later kidnaped Charlie 
Ross; I learn, with something like alarm, 
that I designed the Gunness farm, and 
also, with excessive grief, that Black 
Hand cohorts call me chief. I thought 
myself a decent man, whose record all 
the world might scan; but now, alas, 
too late! I see that all the depths of 
infamy have soiled me with their reek¬ 
ing shame, and so it's time to quit 
the game.” 


IN 

POLITICS 






































MAY 20 JS12 


- 

' s • 

. 

> ■ ,1 :■ V ■>,. ■ ^ t J ■ r ■, , x * 

v . l - , . i . \rx ■ :n r< ■' - • ,, \* , 

■■■■■.'.■ • -■ ,-s"; k--.- .. 


s t v- 








' 

I -} • ‘ ;7 > • ‘ • > . . V r - ... • I . > • \ ■* 

' 

' v ' * • :■ , -pfy, ■; ' ■ '■ r.. ) .</$.' ' ■ _; * ■' 

- 

■ 

,L V--' ,y i ’ :j;' V.*' ’■ .< , v si'*' j*.'!', r, y ; ; 




j*ws$ 


-'f 


•O ■ .* •. f. .*-, i j. : 

M ' ' •' jV 1 ;: 


:7-' "/■ 


V •<>-- V' \ : ' >\ 

: ? v * ' ■ .*♦• ■ ■ * • *! • u,v.' ‘.;v ■ -k-r. * 

•- ■. '■ . «' ' • •*. . r ... v • ^v*i • 

.. 

' v ‘ /> * , r 


' 

r> -..s,V-',V> v *.* 


’V:..y r?t 




■ . • •*' . . *■ • ; - A . v . - :' ./f ..* , • .* s a.- ;.v 

\ «. f * - V * . ; ' . 

' ,/■' - :*■'*■■"' ■ V*«'' : A * . ' i ■ 

■'■■■' t .*'■;■ ;, .*; 5 ■. \ *:-., -*•• • 

*.'.■•■> v. -y' v ' '' -' ■ v; ■■ ; > ■ 


■jr.\ ■" 


’ 

\ . ■ ■ •> 1 , : ■/. 1 : .-J ' 

. 


; . •: • s: - • •- V 


'i 


" , V* <4 t .• •. ' * •' ; ’."* .■ - ^ 

, 

,■ . . Vy ‘ 

•v • : .*• '*. f f - -• ••.u-v.. • : 1 

• • '- r I • . v / ' r V 

I ! *\ • ■ < ■ '* 1 ■ / • • •'< 


.■k*' 


*•’ .<;.* >V'. •'' ‘'ey. 


. ; *. *. *■ 1 .*. .. .) • .* .,*■ • >.>< 


} l • 

- 

N ' ; - 


/■ ’ % i ? ; •: 
V.,! t . ~* i /*. , , 

O'jS.' -.V 

s. *•* i ji *■ * 

; ^>*f-v#a,.*v~ 


l' V 1 

"'j, V%% 


■ *; j -.- 1 

' 

.. v - * v. 


■ - '.tT ' 

,:*V 




& vf. 


■ < • V.. v * 

, -y, \ ' 

"vHV: ^ 




). ; 

.. v , ■ - fy 



V/ 

'•Vv^'Tr 




■ • 1 { i; i 

■••Mi 


>. u 

v 



sai?’,' 

■ 1 , X 

r 


* / " 




%WMm 


V*. V\j 






* 




|v 


■ 

' 


' 

' 


. ; i. ■: . ■■ ■ y 

■ 


. • ■ •'■, . ■ ■ * ‘ ... • *•"' .* ■’■*. , ■" ■ ; -v. i. <i. • : / 

:r* , I'-r v-v ,A4' ’-VU-Vv 

••• •*.iLTs J ,..*v. ^/;•' i-‘ • \ •■ **. ? 1. » . ,4 . . •>?-«••/. jv.*<:• f-,*., *. f*. ; 

% t \ >•: r- . • 

< - ■ 

1 ' • * ' • . y » . » ..>*•. • ■ * * . .k« 


i s ■ ' " ' V-' • : \ \ ■ '■ ' > * I .. : a :. ■ • ,' r> 

■ 

*'. : ■- '.v- , , • • * --t r^■-?*'- ... vA .. , ■* r.v-. 

■*,. ... V.,;'.;... , ./'• ..N ‘ > -- . ’■ . 

/ 

. ■ 

- ' : 

. 

' ' 

' , • ' . . * > 

' . '*. 1 v j* .. .1 .r: * - ■ ■ ■ * ‘ 

■' - ./.. .Vt.r ' 


c 





















